Hi everyone, finally caught up with the discussion and very excited to start coming up with some theories with you all.
Unfortunately after just finishing up this chapter I haven’t had much time to look over my notes to come up with some actually good stuff but I do have a couple of points I want to make, mostly relating to Hideyoshi.
During the scene where Hideyoshi is killed by EVABeatrice he says something along the lines of “That personality is not Eva”. Now of course this scene can’t be trusted entirely due to witches being involved so it could be as Virgilla says just what Beatrice is presenting could happen. But that line could lead more towards Eva actually doing it.
But more importantly I wanted to talk about how dead Hideyoshi is. After Hideyoshi, Rudolph and Kyrie were killed, Ronove refused to say in red that ‘they are dead’. This definitely could just be misdirection or trying to trick us but if we look at the Tips page after his death it says “That was careless of me. Didn’t think you were still alive…”. So I looked further into the Tips page and if you execute Beatrice she starts mocking you and saying “What a useless dream, to try and kill me” so I’m going to be assuming that everything written on this page was written by Beatrice. So we now have two different mentions of Hideyoshi being possibly alive. I was stuck here but looking at what pictoshark said
So this possibly could work while fitting in with Battlers ‘Eva was the killer’ theory, with Hideyoshi killing Nanjo then somehow dying himself properly, although I am not entirely sure if this has any contradictions anywhere.
Unfortunately this chapter left me confused at one point during the ending. During the scene where Beatrice is trying to make Battler say that witches do exist at the banquet, we see Virgilla send the goats to restrain Battler and do some other things that the Virgilla of the story wouldn’t do. My question is, is this Virgilla the real one who has also turned on Battler or is it just a piece that Beatrice put on the gameboard that isn’t the real Virgilla. I’m assuming its the second one for now as Beatrice says that she listened to Virgilla’s advice on the north wind and the sun strategy so it does seem like the Virgilla from the episode was helping out Beatrice as well as Batter, but that still could be part of the ruse. If anyone could confirm which it is that’d be greatly appreciated unless this is just another mystery for us to figure out without a known answer for now.
Now time for a very different theory, I’m sure that someone else has made this theory somewhere else but I think I’m not alone in being concerned in how long we will have to wait for the next 4 chapters to be released, my theory is that on the 4th or 5th of October it will be up on steam but not available yet, maybe just for pre-purchse, then on Halloween of this year it will be released properly. The gap between these two dates is about the same lengh as some of the other Higurashi chapters had between store page going up and being released and it, of course, fits in with the themes of Umineko.
Well… That was quite a ride. I’m not going to lie, that episode was probably the best VN experience I’ve had to date.
Before I get into the mysteries can I just say something about this chapter. I freaking love everything about it. The character development is amazing. The music is amazing. The plot is amazing. The multiple layers of story are amazing. The twists and turns are amazing. The mystery is amazing. I just can’t help but sit her and laugh to myself about how freaking cool this whole thing was. My only regret is that Genji didn’t get to be the badass, knife thrower that I know and love (and that the seagulls didn’t do it. Curse you EVA-Beatrice).
Ok, to start off I guess I should post my notes as per usual. I don’t know if these help anyone or if anyone even bothers to read them (I don’t even read them over fully most of the time) but I guess it’ll be a place to start. Here you go. Also, here’s the red truths for this episode, sorted by what they relate to (in my head at least).
With that out of the way we should get on with some of the solving now. Lets start with a low ball: Episode 1. More specifically, what happened to Natsuhi at the end of episode 1. There are multiple guns so the killer just made use of one of them. There we go, there’s that problem out of the way. Also, I guess we could chalk the people being beaten in the face to someone using their gun as a club, though that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Though now we have a bit of a dilemma, how many guns are there? Four? Why? I don’t really remember the story specifying and regardless it is a Devil’s Proof that there aren’t more guns on the island. There could be X many and we wouldn’t know. Let’s disregard this for now though, since it is sufficient to know that there exists more than one gun.
Cool, while we’re on the subject of episode 1, may I point out something that was said in that episode? None of the doors to the courtyard lock. Just a little something that Battler mentions and then forgets in trying to break open the closed rooms of the first twilight in this episode. We know that the boiler room is connected to the courtyard already, we know that the doors to the courtyard don’t lock, we also know that Beatrice does not confirm that the boiler (nor the chapel may I remind you) are closed rooms according to her definition. In other words, the detective side assumes that the room is closed without checking it. I propose, instead of the whole, ‘accidental death’ theory that Battler goes with, which Beatrice seems ready to deny in red anyway (“An accidental death among the six people was,” Darn you Ronove) that the rooms were never closed since the boiler room literally cannot be a closed room. Granted, this doesn’t exactly account for why Beatrice seems to be so against saying “The six were all killed by other people” as Battler wants her to. We know that none of the people committed suicide (as per the red), so what can have happened? Well, how about this: Kinzo died from his disease. In other words, he did not die because of another person but also did not commit suicide. His death was entirely natural (as much as a disease can be) and so Beatrice couldn’t say that he was killed by another person but was also willing to say, before being stopped, that Kinzo didn’t die by ‘accident’. I think this might explain that particular issue.
Moving on, lets look at the backstory a little bit more. Trying to establish some kind of timeline for past events may give us a little bit more ground for further speculation and I feel like the story is finally permitting that with Rosa’s story and Beatrice’s own remembrances. First of all I’d like to start in around 1923. We know from what Battler says in Episode 1 that Kinzo was a part of the branch family and the main family was wiped out in the earthquake. In the wake of that tragedy Kinzo was chosen as the next head because he had a lot of toes (or something). Kinzo acquires a large amount of capital and is able to rebuild the Ushiromiya fortune. He makes friends with the occupying forces and sells them stuff during the Korean war (1950). Let us assume that he purchases Rokkenjima at close to this time, perhaps a little before or a little after 1950 since his stated purpose was to use it as a supplying ground for the US. He, at the earliest, could have bought Rokkenjima in 1945 or so. Ok, wild theory time (which actually contains the numbers, whooooo random numbers are the best!): So, Japan had a bit of a thing happen in the early 1940s. There was this war that went on and stuff, probably not really a big deal or anything though. Anyway, during wars things tend to get stolen from conquered countries. Think nazi painting stealing level. National treasures and the like used to finance the war effort. Well, Japan has it’s own legends surrounding some of this. Take a look at this one: Yamashita’s gold. Now at first glance you may go, yeah so what? Obviously you think that these are the same thing but why? Let’s look a little closer:
“According to various accounts, the loot was initially concentrated in Singapore, and later transported to the Philippines. The Japanese hoped to ship the treasure from the Philippines to the Japanese Home Islands after the war ended. As the War in the Pacific progressed, U.S. Navy submarines and Allied warplanes inflicted increasingly heavy sinkings of Japanese merchant shipping. Some of the ships carrying the war booty back to Japan were sunk in combat.”
So in other words the gold probably lies at the bottom of the ocean somewhere near the Philippines. Bear with me on this because it is a long shot, 07151129 is the co-ordinates for the gold in latitude and longitude. Try 07° 15’ lat and 112° 9’ long and you’ll see that it’ll put you near a bunch of reefs west of the Philippines. Feel free to disagree because it was a bit of a guess but it would explain, also, why Eva looked at an atlas and who might have written the letters (Hideyoshi anyone?).
Let’s look at a reasonable objection to this theory. It seems that Kinzo acquires a pretty large amount of capital before the war as well, meaning that it would be a pretty good guess that he would have had to find the gold earlier than WWII. This gold would have only been something find-able post WWII or possibly during. Also, would the head of a house like Ushiromiya just be allowed to go off on a treasure hunt in the seas west of the Philippines? How does Beatrice factor into all of this anyway? Does she know the location of the gold and give that information to Kinzo? Is she a treasure hunter?
To be honest, I don’t know. The timeline for when Kinzo got all the capital is very vague. It would appear that he got it before the war but that doesn’t mean it has to be then. Also, it seems to me that Kinzo could have covered up a treasure hunt by saying that he was going to make a business trip and going to the location he had been told. It’s a little thin but we have to start somewhere and I figure this is as good a place as any. 10 tons of gold doesn’t just disappear from a legitimate source so a buried treasure is not a bad theory in my opinion. The numbers fitting is just gravy.
So going back a bit. Suppose that Kinzo and Beatrice had known each other sometime around 1930. They were young and in love. She is a treasure hunter from the west, come to explore the mysterious east (note: this is all wild conjecture, just imagine that they meet somehow and fall in love). Now suppose that Kinzo gets thrust into the Ushiromiya headship and can no longer marry his love because of political reasons. However, he continues to carry on with her. Eventually, he gets wealthy enough to buy an island and hide his love away in a secret mansion. Beatrice gets pregnant with Kinzo’s child and dies in childbirth. Heartbroken, Kinzo names this child Beatrice as well and she lives in the mansion attended by servants, one of which is a younger Kumasawa. Remember how Kumasawa is thought of a really lazy and will disappear? What if she is actually going to the other mansion to attend to chores there? There is also a gardener. We know this because Beatrice asks Rosa when she stumbles across this other mansion if Rosa is the new gardener. What happened to the old one? Who knows but we might want to keep this mystery gardener in mind as we progress in our theories. Regardless, this second Beatrice meets Rosa after having grown up in her mansion-prison. She runs away and the events of Rosa’s encounter happen. How much we can trust Rosa’s story is debatable so we must come back to this in later theories perhaps. For now let us assume that she died. Kinzo discovers that she is gone and goes kind of crazy. 20 years (or so) later we are at the events of 1986 Oct 4.
Edit 3: Let’s think about what we know about Kinzo for a little bit. Kinzo has always been a bit strange, right. Not necessarily occult strange but he’s always had a hair-trigger temper and some seriously strange Western obsession. Ok, let’s assume that he wasn’t just born as a anglophile, why would he be so interested in having a western mansion built out in the middle of an island for his exclusive use? Why his collection of western occult books? Why his naming of his kids with difficult names? The last one particularly interests me. All the others could just be some kind of strange fairytale that Kinzo had in his mind. However, naming your kids as he did is seriously weird. There’s some reason why he is so into western stuff. Did he perhaps live in Europe or America when he was younger? I can’t help but wonder if that might not be what Eva is searching the atlas for if it wasn’t the co-ordinates (which looks fairly unlikely to be sure) and what all the siblings were talking about when they were saying that Kinzo only loved one place in particular in his youth.
Now, we can speculate freely about what any of this backstory has to do with anything. However, let’s try and establish something: there is something more than just murder going on on Rokkenjima. There is a larger story happening behind the scenes that is moving in tandem with the murders of Rokkenjima. The murders are just one layer of the story and we have to peel it back. How? Let’s look at the various reoccurring events and see if we can’t weed some of the false ones out and flesh out the real ones.
Maria’s Rose: Probably one of the most notable ones. I feel like I knew as soon as it happened in episode 1 (as I’m sure all of you did too) that this was going to be a thing that I should pay attention to. This is also one of the more frustrating ones to deal with. Who cares? Isn’t it just a rose? Who cares if it disappears? Couldn’t one of the servants have gotten rid of it (I did think this might be possible) or it just blew off in the wind? Well, admittedly, yes it is possible that the rose has no significance and it could just be a red herring. But I would be really hesitant to dismiss this as just a red herring before exploring it. Consider this possibility: Kinzo is being poisoned. Kinzo is, very slowly, through the alcohol that he loves so much, being poisoned by someone. However, for one reason or another the killer does not want to kill him just yet. The killer brings him to the edge of death (Nanjo said the same thing about Kinzo’s condition last year as in 1986) and then leaves him there; ready for when the moment is right. What does this have to do with the rose? The rose is a test subject. The rose is dying because it is being poisoned to test the dosages. The rose is disposed of to get rid of the evidence of the poisoning. Weird, yes but again, we have to start somewhere in our theories. I guess I might as well be the crazy one.
The Shrine & Torii: We never see this in this episode, at least not technically. What do I mean by that? Easy, the gold is hidden under the shrine somehow. Why do I think that? Mostly it’s just a guess. However, think about the path to the beach as being the sweetfish river that goes down to the sea. The two mentioned in the poem are the two pillars of the torii. The village is the shrine itself and the key is inside of the shrine (probably not an actual key but somehow it helps you to access the gold). So I guess what I should say is not that the gold is under the shrine, but more that the key is hidden in the shrine. So why the destruction of the shrine? Probably, I guess, to hide the key. Either it was not destroyed this time or the evidence of the key is never really gone.
George’s proposal: Well, we see this happen again. What we do with the information is a little beyond me right now. Does it catalyze anything? Does it affect the story at all other than make George sad? It may or it may not. If anyone has ideas on this one I’m just as curious to know them as anyone else.
The Lone Ushiromiya with the Gun: Well we see it twisted here but we definitely see that there ends up being a lone Ushiromiya with a gun by the end. The gun/s take a much more prominent spot in this episode so we may want to think about who is getting guns for the past couple of episodes.
Beatrice’s Letter of Challenge: This time, it is again read aloud to the family at the dinner table by Maria who again claims to have had Beatrice give it to her. Hmmmm… again? It’s a little different this time since we see Beatrice give the letter and umbrella to Maria this time but I guess we can somewhat discount the fact that we ‘saw’ Beatrice do it.
Ok so, what’s going on behind the scenes … ummmmm… That is a very good question… I don’t really know right now. Give me some time to process and I might have a little bit more in the way of theories. Right now I guess we can start with the idea that Kinzo might be being poisoned and that the shrine might have the key to the gold. Combining this together with the backstory of Beatrice; perhaps a former servant, or somehow relative, of Beatrice is back for revenge against the Ushiromiyas and has somehow put themselves in the midst of the family conference. Meh, not very elegant but again, we have to get working on this now.
Edit 6: Let us consider a 19th person (I will justify why I think a 19th person could exist later) and their role, since that seems like a likely place to start. Suppose, as an alternative to the ‘Beatrice has a child’ theory, we go with Kinzo took someone from Fukuin House who looked a lot like Beatrice. What if the original Beatrice was a person somehow connected with the orphanage and so Kinzo has supported it ever since. When she died, Kinzo adopted a girl from Fukuin that looked like Beatrice and brought her to the island as well. Eventually she meets Rosa and dies which leads Kinzo to believe that Fuwadorian is no longer safe to hold his prisoner. In other words, he needs his next Beatrice to be closer and to leave her no way to escape his cage. He creates a room, wherein he keeps Beatrice and the gold. This is the room that Eva discovers. It is the place that Beatrice has been living in, apparently shut away from others. She does figure out a way of escape eventually. Through this she is able to talk with Shannon and Kanon as well as Maria. Since she only started talking with Kanon, Shanon and Maria recently, it is possible that Shannon smashing the mirror in the shrine really did let Beatrice out. So, rather than her finding a way of escape, Beatrice managed (through some unknown means) to convince Shannon to let her escape which may or may not have involved breaking the mirror in the shrine.
Being now able to walk around, she creates some of the mayhem that we see in the story. Suppose that she really does give Maria the letter and that she really does go and live in the VIP room on that conference day. She may even truly believe that she is the witch Beatrice. What other roles does she play? I’m not sure of that yet, I merely wanted to give an explanation on a possibility for how a 19th person could function on the island undetected by anybody else. Plus it was bothering me as to why there was a bedroom attached to the room of gold.
Alright on to the twilights. Well I guess Battler solved most of the twilights proper right? I mean, Eva did it right? I don’t really have any objections, and neither does the witch’s side apparently. Eva seems to have been the one who did it. How did she do the first twilight? That is another good question. It seems like she has an alibi there but I’m a little unsure of that. She doesn’t really seem to have any reason to kill the servants from what I can tell. I can see why she might kill all the other ones that she apparently does kill but why the servants? Is there a second murderer on the island who kills the servants and decides to stop? There’s something suspicious about that. We need to fit the first twilight to the grand scheme of things. Eva doesn’t necessarily have to do it but there is a reason that all of the servant’s (plus probably Kinzo) died. If not Eva then who and why?
As for Nanjo’s death I’m thinking @pictoshark has the right idea about that. Someone killed Nanjo and then died somehow before EVA-Beatrice announces them dead. I’m going to give this one a bit more thought though. It seems to me that there is a more elegant answer to this since it is kind of super built up. I kind of want there to be a really cool trick to this.
Edit 1 (of several I’m sure): Another idea I had was that someone has switched places with a character. In other words, a character is dead but was killed before getting to the island and replaced by another character. This character, therefore, is not ‘affected’ by the red truth that a particular character is dead but is nonetheless a human who is one of the 18. Note: I’m not a fan of this theory but I wanted to get it out there. There is no reason, really, to believe that there is an impostor this time around. However, there isn’t really any evidence that I can see right now why one of the ones we think is dead, is actually alive. (Hideyoshi’s tip is suspicious maybe but hardly good evidence).
Edit 2: Here’s another solution that I thought of. What if there were 19 people on the island and one of the bodies had been moved off the island. For instance, one of the bodies could have been tossed out to sea and so there would only be 18 people ‘on the island’ fulfilling that particular red truth and the person would be truly dead. Then the question becomes, why would someone do that? Does someone get thrown off the island every time? What if ‘off the island’ doesn’t necessarily mean into the sea? This one requires some motive.
Edit 5: I’m not entirely sure where to put this into the post, so I guess here works. I’d like to examine some of the red truths to explore some possible interpretations. First, lets look at some of the red truths that occur during Rosa’s story: It’s definitely dead and There are no more than 18 people on this Rokkenjima. Let’s all agree that the first red truth is very suspicious. The fact that Beato doesn’t say, ‘The human Beatrice is definitely dead’ would indicate that there is the possibility that the dead thing is not Beatrice. However, I would like to point something out; she is talking about someone’s account of past events and using the red truth about it. Here we face a bit of a dilemma, how does the red truth apply to this? To give an example of what I mean suppose I am describing the plot of The Lord of the Rings and I want you to know that Boromir dies. Could I say in red Boromir dies? It is a fictional account after all, something that didn’t happen in real life. Boromir never lived to begin with so obviously he didn’t really die. We know that Beatrice lived, true, but how much can we say about the red truth applying to an account. Does it only say that something is true in the account or is what is said in red actually truth in the world of the game board? Basically what I am asking is does this red truth mean that ‘it’ died in the story of the account only and not in real life (in other words, nobody died and Rosa is making it up, but ‘it’ died for real in the story)? This particular mechanic of the red is a little ambiguous. I feel like I haven’t explained it very clearly but I hope you understand what I mean.
The second red truth is, to me, more interesting before it is said, Battler asks two different things: ‘On this island, there are no more than 18 people’ and '‘There are at least 19 people on this island’. Both of these are not repeated by Beatrice right away. And when Beatrice eventually does say her truth it comes out There are no more than 18 people on this Rokkenjima, which is not quite the same. The phrase ‘this Rokkenjima’ is a little weird. There are a few ways to interpret it. However, I would like to suggest one that might be considerably irritating but also somewhat liberating. The ‘this Rokkenjima’ that is referred to in the red is not the Rokkenjima of 1986 but rather the Rokkenjima of 1967. Beatrice is saying that there are ‘at least’ 18 people on the island at that time, which would be reasonable considering who would be on the island. For a rough count lets consider who might be on the island in 1967. Kinzo and his wife, Krauss, Eva, Rudolf, Rosa, Kumasawa, Genji, Beatrice and perhaps a handful more servants? Even assuming that there are 5 extra servants (a pretty liberal number) and even if Krauss was married at the time (which we don’t know) that would only bring the total up to 15 which is definitely ‘no more than 18’. In short, Beatrice is saying that if n is the number of people on the island in 1967 then n <= 18. This truth would then be a “vacuous truth” (credit to @NotKyon for putting me on this train of thought) meaning that it doesn’t tell us any information while seeming like it does. The reason that Beato didn’t want to say the truth when Battler wanted her too before was because then it would have to apply to the world of the gameboard in 1986 and so would tell us too much. The only thing that changes between when Battler asks her to ‘repeat’ and when she gives the truth is that Rosa is telling her story when Beato gives the truth. Beato evidently couldn’t do it before but now can by saying ‘this Rokkenjima’ and letting us think that she means the current gameboard rather than the past Rokkenjima. All that to say there are reasons to think that there are 19 people on the island.
Another little quirk in the red is when Battler and Beatrice fight over the first twilight. Battler asks her to repeat ‘The six victims are all dead’. Instead she says 6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead! This is clearly not what Battler asks. Battler asks for the ‘victims’. By leaving out the word victims, Beato seems to say that perhaps not everyone was a ‘victim’. This feeds into the whole trouble with repeating another line that Battler wants her to say: ‘The six were all killed by other people’. This one seems particularly devastating to the witch’s side. I’ve already given a possible interpretation of that whole section about accidental death but this just adds to the evidence.
So, just as a kind of extra thing, we have a lot of information now about a lot of things that we haven’t really worked into any kind of theory or overarching story. I’m just going to try and throw in some stuff off the top of my head and I’m sure that more will come later. Nanjo says that he has a sick grandson, Kyrie says that she was also pregnant and due the same time as Asumu was due with Battler, Shannon has a really good memory, Kanon still doesn’t have a name, Maria is still really weird, Nanjo doesn’t really ‘fit’ anywhere in the story (as in, he doesn’t really have any kind of background, no history, even one that is hinted at aside from the sick grandson which is kind of debatable anyway), the letters that randomly appear in other episodes did not do so in this one, Maria and Rosa did not get staked as people did in previous second twilights, what happened to Jessica after she escapes the servant’s room? There are just so many things that need some kind of explanation. I feel like we should be able to form a cohesive story now. Lets do this thing guys! Lets beat this witch!
Hey. Hey. Here’s something to throw into the discussion.
At the end of this episode, it really seems like Eva is the culprit, doesn’t it? She turns on Gameboard Battler, says ‘took you long enough!’ and shoots him. Wolves and sheep puzzle. She has motive, she had opportunity for every death except for Nanjo. She didn’t want to kill Hideyoshi or George, but they couldn’t accept her crimes. George wanted to be with Shannon even in death, which Eva couldn’t accept.
Is Eva also Beatrice?
Well, EVA Beatrice is Beatrice. We saw the succession ceremony and everything. Let me ask it another way …
Did Eva write and send the letter of challenge?
Why? She wants the gold and headship for herself, doesn’t she? If she was on the verge of solving the riddle herself, why tell anyone? Did she need her sibling’ help? Rosa’s hint does guide her in the end. And she can’t exactly get the gold off the island without Krauss’s assistance. So is the letter meant to set up the idea that whoever finds the gold gets the headship and inheritance, so her siblings will accept it? After all, the meaning of the epitaph is only a theory, at that point. Kinzo hasn’t confirmed it. (Maybe that’s why he gets killed so early on in this episode, so he can’t disconfirm it.) So even if she was on the verge of solving the riddle, and only needed a little help, maybe she still needed to establish her position. And hence the letter. It’s a risk, but without risk, there can be no reward.
But then why kill them all, all the witnesses who heard the letter and would acknowledge her headship? Why waste this elaborate scheme? Did she really go mad with lust for gold?
No, what I’m really getting at is … do the challenger and the culprit have to be the same person?
If you look at the epitaph, there’s something weird about it. It seems to foretell the murders, but it also doesn’t. Rather, it tells you where to find the key, and then to sacrifice the six chosen by the key. Then it says two will be torn apart by ‘those who remain,’ and goes through all the bloody twilights.
Taken metaphorically, it makes the most sense as some kind of word puzzle. Taken literally … doesn’t it sound like someone is challenging you to commit these murders, in exchange for the rewards of the Golden Land? Not, in other words, like they’re committing these murders themselves. And everything should only get started after someone takes the first step and finds the key, but that’s not what happens (seemingly).
If Eva really is the killer, is there still someone else who prompted her to kill?
Hmmmm… excellent points. Did Eva come to the island with the letter and decide that that was the best way of gaining headship of the Ushiromiya. Eva seems to originally go to the island just with the idea of trying to scam as much money from Krauss as possible. However, other Eva (later to become EVA-Beatrice), has other plans and mentions the riddle during Eva’s dream. She could have hatched the plan then, possibly. I’m not sure if she would have gotten the plan any earlier, because then what would be the point in the plan to scam Krauss or involve other siblings?
There is one problem that I see; who committed the first twilight murders? It would seem like nobody really has motive to do this. The servants aren’t standing in the way of Eva’s ascension to the head of the Ushiromiya family. Eva might have reason to kill Shannon if she knew about her and George (which, from episode 2 we might conclude that she did) but there isn’t any reason to kill the other servants. In fact, Eva didn’t really have opportunity to kill the servants unless all of the other siblings participated. The first twilight is, in this episode, possibly more inexplicable than Nanjo’s death. Why are the servants killed? Why does Kinzo die? Why is Kinzo’s death and disposal so different from everyone else’s?
On the other hand, I love the last comment that you made:[quote=“mimsy, post:22, topic:29”]
If Eva really is the killer, is there still someone else who prompted her to kill?
[/quote]I think that you are right on about this. There is something or somebody that is prompting people to kill. Gold is a pretty good motivator to kill but there wasn’t really any need to kill Krauss and Natsuhi if that was the only motivator. Rosa and Maria make sense and Kyrie and Rudolf make sense too. However, Hideyoshi makes no sense at all for Eva to kill. Why would Hideyoshi, who knew that Eva was going to kill Rosa and Maria (if that was indeed what happened) all of a sudden not be able to accept Eva killing Kyrie and Rudolf? I get the feeling that Hideyoshi was killed by someone else. There is someone who is prompting the killings in each of the cases I think. There is another person or thing motivating these murder sprees.
Outside of how exactly HOW the first twilight was conducted we’ve got 2 problems. To sum them up:
If Eva came up with the letter plan, why did she then go for the massacre plan afterward.
Eva has no motive for the first twilight, none of the people who died in it were in her way to the succession (except Kinzo).
So why don’t we bash those problems together? Hit together these rough stones, spark the fire of solution? What if Eva wasn’t responsible for the first twilight? What if something happened between the first twilight committed by a third party and the second which made her want to kill? What if she thought someone else was trying to get the gold by being the last man standing, and she feared for her life, deciding to kill everyone around her?
I’ll throw my idea out there, see if it makes sense to you guys. It’s kinda imperfect and could use some polishing but I think it alright.
So here goes nothing. I would like to present some more basis to start forming theories about what is going on on Rokkenjima. Bear in mind that there is a lot of conjecture but I’ll try and make sure that as much of my theorizing sticks to facts.
To start with, I would like to propose a way of sorting all of the murders. I have mentioned in previous posts that there could be a 19th person who could be pulling more strings than we think. I’ve shown that this 19th person could exist on this third Rokkenjima. We know they could exist on the first and we might have actually seen them on the second (emphasis on might). One of the strongest arguments I think we can make for the existence of a 19th person is the first night in episode 3 as well as Nanjo’s death. This first twilight seems different from other first twilights since we may actually be able to eliminate people from suspicion. It seems like none of the siblings did it and they don’t really have any discernible motive to kill the servants. Nor, for that matter, do the children. Before, when the servants died I had always just assumed that they were collateral damage. They had seen something or just were unlucky enough to be in the way. As far as we can tell, there really was no reason to kill the servants other than that. It’s possible that Shannon might be killed by Eva in order to prevent her marrying George but that kind of seems pretty crazy. Aside from the lack of motive it seems to me that none of the siblings had opportunity to kill all the people of the first twilight. As I mentioned before, Kinzo could have died from natural causes but the others were certainly murdered. Could all of the siblings have collaborated to kill the servants? That seems unlikely since they all seem pretty ready to believe in another person being the murderer of Rosa and Maria. You would think that if they turned up dead and Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie know that Eva and Hideyoshi had taken part in the previous murders and were also absent from them during the time when Rosa and Maria were killed that Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie would just naturally assume that Eva and Hideyoshi did it and not trust them at all if not just outright kill them on the spot. Instead, they seem to think that there is another person who killed Rosa and Maria. What I am saying is that I think we can eliminate any of the siblings and their spouses from being the perpetrators of the first twilight. As for the children, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that Maria could have done it. George or Jessica might have been able to. But George wouldn’t have killed Shannon imo and Jessica wouldn’t have killed Kanon. Plus Jessica has that crazy bad asthma so I find it hard to believe that she did it. Battler is the detective so we are eliminating him from suspicion because that’s how detective novels work.
Now we are left with three options for who committed the first twilight: a 19th person, Kinzo and Nanjo. Obviously for Kinzo to be the culprit he would have had to fake his death. Some other corpse with 6 toes was burned and Kinzo killed all of the servants because he’s crazy. Honestly I don’t know why he would do this but I don’t think I can say the same thing about him that I can for the other servants; that he doen’t have any motive for killing them. It may be that they are accomplices in something else and he is tying up loose ends. However this leaves us with the inescapable red truth 6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead! This red truth comes right after the first twilight so while you could try and say that Kinzo could have killed the servants and then died himself you would then have to explain how he got into the furnace in the boiler room. You might try and wiggle around and say that it doesn’t mean literally dead in Kinzo’s case or something to that effect. However it seems to mean that in other people’s cases, so why only in Kinzo’s case is it not true? Basically it seems like Kinzo didn’t do it. If anyone can combat the red truth then I would love to hear how. For the time being though, let us take this red truth as it is.
The next person on our list is Nanjo. Now, Nanjo seems to be a good candidate for the first twilight. Although he lacks motive (as per usual, it seems) he certainly had opportunity. So, while we can’t really say anything about why he might do something like this, he seems to be the most likely of the living people to have actually done the deed (if we ignore a 19th person). However, this brings us to Nanjo’s death and the question of who killed Nanjo. We could argue that one of the people who seemed to be dead was not actually dead and later came to kill Nanjo but, again, we must ask who and why. If we ignore a 19th person then someone pretended to be dead, eventually got up, killed Nanjo for some reason, didn’t kill Jessica and then killed themselves (or somehow or other died) so that all of the red truth could be true? Possible but very inelegant and it feels kind of contrived. The most likely idea in this vein that I could think of is that George is faking death after guessing that Nanjo committed the first twilight. If this was the case then Nanjo would have killed Shannon and so George would have a motive. He may have killed Nanjo, imitated Kanon for Jessica’s sake and brought her away from the servant’s room. After he did that he killed himself so that he could ‘join Shannon in death’ or something like that. In other words, George’s death was a trap so that he could kill Nanjo in revenge. This seems pretty plausible to me and provides a motive for Nanjo’s death. Nanjo’s motives for committing the first twilight are very unclear but, if we believe what Nanjo says in that scene about his sick grandchild I could possibly see some Mr Freeze stuff going on where Nanjo commits crimes to try and save his terminally ill grandchild.
Now, let me propose my theory. I believe that there are certain deaths that hold particular significance to the overall narrative of Rokkenjima. Let us assume that there are two categories for murders: motivated or ‘central’ murders and ‘cover’ murders. This theory assumes that there are certain people that are killed because of some underlying backstory to Umineko. In other words, the stuff that is going on in the background is the cause for those murders. It may be that there is a 19th person who kills these people or it may be that a 19th person prompts their murder. It may even be that there is no 19th person but one of the 18 has a reason to kill these certain people each time. In these cases they die every time because the backstory is the same every time. These are the motivated murders or central murders. They are the important ones that we should focus on and tell us about what is going on in the background and what happened in the past. So, what are the ‘cover’ murders. These are the noise in the machine. They obscure our data collecting by giving us a whole bunch more murders to worry about. If there is a 19th person who is performing the central, motivated murders then these cover murders could be collateral damage (i.e. witnesses or people who might be able to know who the murderer is when they see who was murdered), people murdered by another person (for instance if Eva is not the central murderer then any murders committed by her are cover murders or are only central murders by accident if she happens to kill someone whom the central murderer would have killed anyway), or people who were merely killed to throw the detective off the scent. Why go to such elaborate lengths for this theory? Because of Nanjo’s death.
There are certain characters that die in every episode. Now, we would expect this. After all there are at least 18 people on the island, right? If only 5 at most can survive every episode and we’ve only had 3 episodes there would expect there to be some overlap. However, if we think in terms of central murders and cover murders then the people who die every time become a lot more interesting. But how are we to tell which ones are the central ones and which are the cover ones? Well the first step is as mentioned above; they die in every episode. This gives us a good starting place. What else? Doesn’t it seem strange that in every episode so far there is at least one series of murders wherein there is a witness? In Episode 1 there were the last three twilights where Maria was in the room with them while they were being killed. In Episode 2 there was the scene with Kanon in the servants’ room where Nanjo and Kumasawa were killed. In this episode there is Nanjo’s death where Jessica is a witness. Why do I bring this up? These murders go against what we might normally think for a murderer to do. You don’t leave witnesses. There is no benefit to it. Why do it? One reason might be that this particular person only is interested in certain deaths. Only certain people must die and killing other people wouldn’t be what they want. Notice anything about the victims of these particular murders? Yup, our very own Nanjo seems to be a recurring victim. Could it be that Nanjo is one of these central murders? I think this is very likely. If we think that Nanjo might be one then who else? Kumasawa and Genji come to mind. Both die in episode 1 and while Genji doesn’t die in episode 2 it would be reasonable to say that Genji was able to fend off the murderer this time around while he wasn’t able to in episode 1.
Now I know this is largely speculation and I haven’t exactly given a great reason to believe that there are these central murders or cover murders. However, I will leave it here for now, since this post has already gone on too long. If I think of some added detail that might shed some more light on this theory I will post some more.
I like the boldness of your theorizing, @Seraphitic! This is getting very interesting.
My first thought was that we could draw up a list of victims from gameboard to gameboard, then think about everything what we know about them. If we examine their relationships to the rest of cast, we can come closer to discovering what motives there are for murdering them. If Nanjo is one of the central murders, we should think about what we know about Nanjo.
We should think about Nanjo, anyway, actually. He’s an odd piece on the gameboard, isn’t he? He’s Kinzo’s old friend and doctor, but he’s not family. There’s no reason for him to be at the family conference, except to confirm the state of Kinzo’s health. It’s not that he’s suspicious, exactly – he seems like a good-natured and well-intentioned man – but the more you think about him, the more he sticks out. Even his seating at the dinner table is awkward.
But because he’s a good-natured man – and because he’s not as embroiled in the family drama as the rest – it’s hard to think of a reason why someone would want to murder to him. Could it be because of his closeness to Kinzo?
Hmm. Here’s an odd detail. I checked the TIPS and the Witch’s Game Record to get an idea of who lived and who died in each episode. In both episodes one and two, Nanjo dies on the seventh twilight, gouged by the Stake of Belphegor. Is there any meaning to that, any message the culprit is trying to send? Has Nanjo sinned against anyone through sloth or idleness? Here’s what Belphegor’s character screen says …
'Belphegor is well trusted and known for being a reticent, serious, and responsible piece of furniture.
However, this is partly due to her demonic desire to turn her masters into useless, lazy pigs.
In that sense, she might be the most demonic of all the sisters.’
Maybe this ‘sister’ is a metaphor for Nanjo’s crime in the culprit’s eyes. Maybe he didn’t do anything evil himself, but he enabled someone else (I’m looking at Kinzo), and that’s the motive behind Nanjo’s murder.
(Sidenote: there’s some randomness to the stakes, but there are some patterns, too. It doesn’t seem to correspond to the twilight, but the person. In both episodes one and two, Kumasawa dies on the eighth twilight, gouged by the Stake of Leviathan. But in episode one, Kanon dies on the fifth twilight, and in episode two, Kanon dies on the second twilight. Both times he is gouged by the Stake of Satan. Likewise, Hideyoshi is gouged by the Stake of Beelzebub in episodes one and three, but in episode one, it’s the second twilight, and in episode two, it’s the fifth twilight. If we believe in witches and demons, we could say it’s because that stake is mystically drawn to the sin of that victim, no matter the timing of the death. If we believe in a human culprit, either the culprit is choosing those stakes to send a message, or it’s truly a coincidence. If you’re curious, Leviathan is associated with envy, Satan with wrath, and Beelzebub with gluttony.)
Wonderful @mimsy! Oh man, this might be super helpful.
I totally agree with you, Nanjo sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s very odd in how little we know about him. He’s just a guy that happens to be on the island during the time of the family conference. But is that really all that he is? We don’t have specific proof one way or the other but the idea of the cover and central murders seems to give him some extra importance. I have a strong feeling that Nanjo’s got something of a history and we should be able to figure out what it is.
I hadn’t really thought about the stakes so much but now that you bring it up it actually seems like a perfect place to look for our backstory that we so dearly lack. Looking at Nanjo, as you pointed out, he gets pierced with the stake of Belphegor who is the demon of sloth. I’m not sure I would necessarily bring in the descriptions for the stake characters although I could be wrong about that. I would be more inclined to just stick with the underlying sin. Somehow or other, our murderer is saying that Nanjo was lazy and that is why he is being killed. What might this mean? Well for one thing it could mean that, in the past, Nanjo did not save someone’s life and so the murderer thinks that Nanjo didn’t do it because he was lazy. Kumasawa similarly; she was envious of someone or something and so committed some sin for which she is being killed. For instance, if she was someone who split her time between the normal mansion and Kuwadorian she might have been envious of the person living in Kuwadorian. I’m not sure that all of the stakes are messages from the killer but I feel like they truly could give us insight for some of these.
Hmmmm looking into stakes used to pierce each person in every case might be an idea. brb, If I check the witche’s game notes, I can probably post it all here.
However, an important note! As far as my memory goes no-one in story even notes that the stakes have different designs. And even if they do, the only evidence we have regarding each stakes identity is the Witch’s game record. This same piece of evidence also contains such erroneous claims as:[quote=The Game Record]The Witch Beatrice
Revived on the ninth twilight.
Finally opens the door to the Golden Land.[/quote] So we should take anything we gleam from them with a grain of salt.
Us EP 4 readers may know of a certain red truth which if looked at in the right way flies straight in the face of EP 1’s record, so that gives us TWO very significant reasons to doubt their telling of events.
Still I’ll paste what I could gleam from them here:
A little thing I noticed, no one is ever killed by a different stake. If they die from a stake, in another game they will either die from that same stake or not die to the stakes at all.
Thanks to me losing my saves, I have no way of accessing the tips screen for EP 4 right now, so I can’t add or check data for EP 4 even if I wanted to. I’ll probably post the link to the sheet itself in that thread, maybe someone can add that data for me.
Another thing that might aid your thinking is to look at the scenes which are repeated every episode. The start of all three gameboards are very similar, but since it’s repeating, the story has a tendancy to skip over some of the less relevant aspects as we move forward to the main event. But despite this, there are some scenes which are repeated every single episode. One of them, as Seraphitic has noted, is Maria meeting Beatrice in the rose garden.
What other scenes or events are repeated each episode, and why do you think this might be the case?
Ah man, Banquet of the Golden Witch. This was the episode that really hooked me on Umineko. It’s wonderful finally having more to go on regarding the mystery and the unfolding of the mystery of this episode in particular was great. While I love Battler and Beato’s solo interactions, adding Ronove and Virgilia made the meta scenes so much more fun. The entire episode was just such a joy to read.
The red web made me truly give up. I had no clue how it was ever going to be resolved. Nowadays I look back and see it very differently. Kyrie’s philosophy was right ^^ Still though, Evatrice went from someone I just looked at as an annoying spoiled child to someone legitimately frightening in that scene. And then that ending happens and I feel like an idiot for not realizing it earlier
Newcomers, how did this episode affect your overall impression of Umineko so far?
Veterans, care to share your memories of reading this episode for the first time?
Oh man, the introduction of the “catbox” idea which can basically be summed up as: “If Battler’s gamepiece didn’t see it, then it didn’t necessarily happen” is a real game changer for me. It’s probably the biggest hint Umineko ever gives it’s readers, and I’m really proud of the Podcast crew for figuring it out before they were told outright.
Aside from the Red Spam ™ at the end, this episode didn’t seem to have NEARLY as much Red as EP 2 did. On the topic of the Red Spam ™, what do you guys think of it? Any solutions? It might be an idea to gather a couple valid solutions together, just in case one gets smashed up by a later Red Truth. I have an idea higher up in the thread, but I want to see what you guys can come up with before you read that!
Also, about the catbox, this does reassess some of our knowledge of the personalities of various characters. e.g, I don’t think we’ve had any really good George X Shannon moments from Battler’s POV, just kinda cute things. Maybe their relationship hasn’t progressed as far as we’ve been led to believe? Most of Rosa’s abuse of Maria is also away from the watching eyes of Battler, so maybe it isn’t as bad as we think.
REMEMBER, all of these are just possibilities so, take them with a grain of salt, but we should seriously think it over.
Can you guys think of any character defining quirks that Battler has never been privy to? Why not post them? Maybe we can get a ball rolling here.
From your point of view I may look like a witch, but I’m barely past you guys, I’m only at Episode 4.
Take it from me: [color=red]the story is best experienced if you stop between episodes to think.[/color] Hold off on that Episode 4 button until AFTER the tea party finishes, alright?
As an Umineko veteran whose first experience with EP3 was the anime and that was one of the only ways to witness it for a while (since I despise pirating stuff but couldn’t afford the VNs), let me say that viewing things across the various mediums is an experience. With the anime, you had the perfect casting for voices (especially Sayaka Ohara as Beato, you got gud on that DEEN), but you felt a lot was left out. Then the manga came out and since the translations for EP3 took the longest (all of the question arcs and some of EP5 got translated fully before EP3 got its full translation!), it took a while to compare it (and by then there were YT playlists of EP3).
The scenes that stood out to me of course across the mediums were Rosa meeting Kuwadorian Beatrice, the coronation scene, and Beato’s change of heart until the end. The Red Text Webs scene, one of my favorites (since I’m in the fandom minority who actually likes Evatrice), was best handled in the manga in my opinion (though I’d kill for the music and voices to play as I read it), it’s beautifully done.
One thing I’ve noticed in the thread that people seem to miss is Beato during the Golden Land scene as her trick is revealed. While it could have looked better visually in the anime, it’s something that’s done right across the mediums.
But don’t fret, this game has a lot of answers in spite of it having so much fantasy layers to it, new readers! When the games were first coming out, people had a lot of time to discuss their ideas but very little guidance to go on.
And so begins the Episode 3 Tea Party. I hope y’all have a big-ass thermos of tea because this is going to be a long one.
Let’s begin with a few things that have been knocking around in my brain for a little while. I’ll try and be as organized as possible but as any of you who’ve read my posts before know, I’m very prone to rambling and not finishing a thought very well. Well, here goes nothing.
General Musings and Interpretation Methods
I’d like to begin by suggesting something that I hinted at before. That is, I’d like to suggest that the magical scenes are, at least partially, metaphorical in nature. I feel like a number of us started off with the theory that the magical scenes were actually what someone was seeing but that they were being fooled by a bunch of flashy magic tricks. In other words, we were interpreting the magical scenes through that lens. Then, when Virgilia and Battler talked about the idea that the magical scenes were like a way of explaining how something happened we all jumped on that bandwagon. In other words, our method of interpretation was no longer, ‘find out how the magic trick was done’ and became ‘ignore magical scenes since they are just the witches lies’. However, I’d like to suggest the third lens of interpretation, that the magical scenes contain subtle metaphors and that certain people, words or things are analogous to what is actually happening.
What evidence do I have for this idea? We actually had this evidence all along and just never really thought about it too hard, I think. The Seven Stakes of Purgatory have been with us for quite a while and we never really thought about them. However, they are a perfect example of the kind of thing that I am talking about. The Stakes (as characters) are metaphorical for the stakes (as objects). In fact, you could even go a little deeper (though this is probably me just getting ridiculous) and say that even the physical objects are metaphorical for people’s sins. The Siesta Sisters are similar to this. In my view I would probably interpret them as guns. After all, we get that kind of language from them all the time. There is the issue of them, in the magical scene, killing Natsuhi and Krauss by strangling them. However, you could say that instead Krauss and Natsuhi were forced out of the house at gunpoint and then killed. All of this seems, to me, to be enough evidence to at least make the theory plausible.
The question then becomes, if this is the case, what does everything else mean? And do things always mean the same thing? Do loci always mean the same thing and does Beatrice always stand for the same person. After all, we are told by Bern at the end of the first Ura Tea Party that “She does have the name Beatrice, but that does not necessarily mean that she is ‘one individual woman.’ … In other words, she’s not some human. Her existence is a personification of the rules of this world.” Now, can we trust Bernkastel? Some might argue yes, some might argue no. Personally, I’m just as happy to get information from her either way. After all, we were just fine with getting help from Virgilia earlier in episode 3. I still think that Virgilia’s help was invaluable so I’m fine with Bern’s help here. From what I can glean from Bern, Beatrice isn’t necessarily our culprit (though she might be). Bern says that ‘she’s not some human’ so she might stand for something else. What else? Love? Please stop laughing… ok… no really… I mean it guys stop laughing. It seems entirely possible that, given what Beatrice said in the second episode and what seems to be a lot of Beatrice’s motivations (emphasis on seems to be) Beatrice could stand for a motive rather than a sigular person. She might stand for a person who is motivated by that motive but I think that the unifying thing about her appearance is that she could just stand for love. Go ahead and laugh now.
Ok so there are a bunch of other things that we could sit here and try and interpret but I’m not so sure that I will be able to yet. Lets worry about those as we go on in the tea party. For future posters: if you could weigh in on the weirdness of the fact that Kanon keeps coming back when he is supposed to be dead, Ronove’s identity, Virgilia’s identity, EVA-Beatrice’s identity, any of the magical battles and so on I would love to hear it. I’d like to briefly touch on something, though. What is the Meta? I mean, we are supposing that the magical things stand for something, correct? What if the Meta stands for something? What could be more magical than the Meta? So surely, if we are going by this theory, the Meta must be full of various metaphors and analogies, right? I think that there is something about the Meta, Bern, Lambda, Beato and even possibly Battler that makes the Meta more than just a higher plane of existence. Lambda herself seems to hint that she had something to do with Beatrice gaining her powers. Could Lambda stand for something? These are questions I don’t have an answer too but I thought would be a good idea to bring up.
To sort of cap off the general musings section I figured I would take a quick look (heh, yeah right) at @Aspirety’s suggestion[quote=“Aspirety, post:29, topic:29, full:true”]
Another thing that might aid your thinking is to look at the scenes which are repeated every episode. The start of all three gameboards are very similar, but since it’s repeating, the story has a tendancy to skip over some of the less relevant aspects as we move forward to the main event. But despite this, there are some scenes which are repeated every single episode. One of them, as Seraphitic has noted, is Maria meeting Beatrice in the rose garden.
What other scenes or events are repeated each episode, and why do you think this might be the case?
[/quote]
So, there are a few things that I’m not too sure whether they occur or not. For one thing there seems to be, in episode 2, a 19th person that looks and awful lot like Beatrice. Now, interpretations vary as to whether there actually was a 19th person or not but perhaps, whatever is going on in those scenes between ‘Beatrice’ and Maria as well as ‘Beatrice’ and the servants happens each time. Previously I gave a brief list of things that I saw as repetitions. Namely: Maria’s rose, the shrine, George’s proposal, the lone Ushiromiya with a gun, and the letter of challenge.
There are a few other things that I would like to point out (some credit goes to other people for pointing them out; @pictoshark and @NotKyon, thanks). For one thing, Battler never sees Kanon’s dead body. This is a bit of an oddity as Kanon, supposedly dies in each and every one of the episodes so far. Battler never actually sees Kanon’s dead body in the first one and we all just assume that Kanon is actually dead. However, it’s unclear as to whether anyone other than Nanjo was with Kanon, even Jessica. Battler assumes that Jessica was with Kanon but that is never actually confirmed by anyone. In other words, Kanon’s dead-ness is never confirmed by Battler and always is confirmed by an outside source. @pictoshark and I put our heads together a little bit and came up with the idea that, if Kanon had some way to avoid the red, then we would never have any confirmation that he was dead. We thought that, as I suggested in episode 2, if only Kanon’s identity as ‘Kanon’ was killed then he could still be alive, though no longer as Kanon. It’s a bit of a… well to be honest a bit of a cop out. I feel like there might be a more elegant solution. For now, though, let us consider the idea that Kanon may not be as dead as we might like (possible evidence would be the magical scenes where Kanon appears with an alarming frequency). Should this be the case then we might very well ask the question of why Kanon might want to fake his death. Also, why would Nanjo want to play along? What is in it for Nanjo if he co-operates?
There’s another thing that I would like to add to my previous list of things that happen each time. I’d like to add the fact that Kinzo throws his ring out of the window. We saw it in episode one and three but not in episode 2. However, I feel like we are meant to assume this is the case in episode 2. What effect could this have. Well, if Kinzo throws it out and somebody wants it, they have to go out and get it. Therefore someone has to go out in the storm and look for the ring. So, probably our killer is out there in the rain looking around for a ring.
There are a number of minor things that might repeat but that we are never told whether or not they do. For one thing, whether or not the servant’s shifts change each time. In episode 1 we see a scene where Genji gets a call, apparently from Krauss. He tells Kanon and Shanon that there has been a change in the servant’s shift schedule. In particular he especially mentions that Shannon is to stay put (which Shannon promptly ignores). I always found this scene and its implications interesting. The fact that it is never mentioned again seems strange to me.
Another event that might be happening each time is the whole issue of the head ring. It seems to happen at least twice; once each in episodes 1 and 3. I don’t recall it happening in episode 2. This event seems to provide the reader with a possible way that someone could get the head ring and seal the envelope. However, the question of whether it is used or not is never really discussed. We aren’t really sure of whether the head ring is used or if the seal is forged. There are, undoubtedly more scenes that we are only shown once, but which occur in each episode. I’ll continue to think and update this post as other events come to mind.
The Mysteries Thus Far
So, one of the things that I thought might be useful for us in our endeavor was a nice big list of things that we need to solve. I think that we are trying to put puzzle pieces together without a clear picture of what the puzzle has to look like in the end. We should probably try and see what the mysteries are that our theories have to explain.
I’m going to try and introduce a convention (credit for this idea goes to @pictoshark who thought this would help). I will use lime to denote mysteries. It’s more just for eye-catching purposes and so that people can see at a glance what mysteries there are. However, it might be useful for us to at least keep track of things. Meh, use it or don’t use it, I’m just doing it for my own organizational purposes.
Episode 1:
Who gave Maria the umbrella and letter?: This is one that we’ll have to answer in every episode, really. I’m only going to put it here but it’s one of those repeating mysteries that @Aspirety was talking about before. This is probably one of the more important things to try and answer. Did Rosa do it? A 19th person? Is Maria making it up? There are many possible answers at this point, I think.
Who wrote the letter of challenge?: Similar to the above mystery but possibly having a different answer. It is possible that one person gave the letter to Maria, not knowing what was in the letter and so the letter itself was authored by the true mastermind (cliche enough?)
What happened on the first twilight?: In other words, the who, what, when, where, why, how of the first twilight. The first twilights always seem like the harder ones to narrow down seeing as nobody really tends to have alibis. At least in the first episode we notice that most of the people in the mansion were killed. The only ones who weren’t were Natsuhi and Kinzo (and we could debate Kinzo depending on what you think of Natsuhi saying that she saw Kinzo earlier that morning). We also assume that the people were killed in the dinning room and taken to the shed since there was a lot of what looked like blood
What happened on the second twilight?: I’ve proposed a solution on the first episode thread so take a look at that if you wish. I’m not sure if it’s right and there are other possible solutions but I’m not going to say too much about this one
What happened to Kinzo?/How did Kinzo get out of the room?: This refers to how Kinzo might have managed to get out of the study without disturbing the receipt. Quite a number of possibilities exist such as Kinzo never really being in the study, Natsuhi moved him out of the study, Kinzo hid and exited later etc. Related to this might be the question of whether or not the body found in the furnace really is Kinzo.
What happened to Kanon in the boiler room?: Was Kanon really stabbed? Did he stab himself? Did he really die from the wound? After all, it seems that we are going just off of what Nanjo told us. Nobody except him sees the body (we are meant to assume that Jessica sees him too but we are never told that; Battler just assumes it is the case)
How did the letter get onto the table?: Again, we seemingly have only a couple options. There very well could be someway to get the device onto the table from the outside but I feel like anyway that we could work out to do that would require too many machinations that we just don’t have evidence for. It seems more likely and more simple if someone just places the letter on the table. If that was the case, who would do it and why?
What happened to Nanjo, Genji and Kumasawa? Also, why was Maria left alive?: Again, we have a couple of murders but this time we have a witness. She says Beatrice did it. Ok, sure Maria. Whatever you say. This bunch of murders seems particularly interesting. I definitely seems to point to the fact that somebody faked their death at some point in this game
What happened to Natsuhi and what did the children see at the end?: I gave a possible solution to Natsuhi’s ‘suicide’ earlier in this thread. There is another aspect of this mystery though, what happened to the letter that she had been supposedly reading? Who wrote that and what did they say?
Episode 2:
What happened to the shrine/What was that whole thing with the mirror?: This is the first time that we hear about anything in particular regarding that shrine that we first see is destroyed. We aren’t sure when the shrine is destroyed but we do know that it contained that mirror which we are told that Shannon destroyed. Why might this be important and is the destruction of the shrine related to the destruction of the mirror?
*What happened with the first twilight?: This one seems pretty well wrapped up but I feel like it might be dangerous to move on without a little bit of thought. There was that one scene where it shows all of the siblings (including Rosa who, in theory, shouldn’t have been there) admitting that Beatrice is a witch. We also don’t really have any idea of who did it or why? Why was “Happy Halloween Maria.” written on the door? Why were the people arranged that way? It seems like stopping our thinking on this mystery just because we know how the siblings might have been brought into the chapel is really premature.
Who or what do Rosa, Maria, Kyrie and Genji see?: Basically, who is the person who looks an awful lot like Beatrice? Is it someone dressing up as Beatrice? Is it someone that they know or someone they don’t know? Is there an actual person? This one seems to violate what we thought we knew earlier about there only being 18 people.
What happened in the servant’s room?: This was one of the mysteries that stumped us a bit in the last episode. What exactly happened here? How did the bodies get taken out? Was it Kanon in there? If not who was it? To be frank it seems like we have a lot more questions than answers on this section of the episode. I’d like to say I have an idea but I’m still pretty bad with getting this mystery a satisfying solution.
What happened in Natsuhi’s room?: I suggested two different solutions to this in the episode 2 tea party. Episode 3 brings up a third possibility. The first possibility is that the red simply means that the door was locked from the inside at some point but was not locked from the inside when the bodies were found. A second interpretation is that the person who killed the three people was among the three. In other words a murder-suicide happened. A third option brought up by the third episode is that the three might have been fatally injured but managed to escape to Natsuhi’s room and lock the door before dying. But then we must wonder why they would go to Natsuhi’s room in the first place. Was it just nearby? Were they in there prior, got attacked and managed to get the attacker out before dying?
What happened in the parlor?: This is in reference to the letter that is found in the parlor that Rosa kicks Battler out for. Did Rosa, herself place it? Did they just not notice it? Was it placed there by some other means? Actually, we should ask the bigger question, where do all these damn letters come from in the first place? Who keeps writing them? Where are they getting all these envelopes? Are they all the work of one person?
What is with that end scene?: Probably one of the harder questions, honestly. Also probably one of the ones most open for interpretation. Is it the real life or just fantasy? (No, I will not continue that joke.) I’m more interested in whether or not Genji and Kinzo truly survive to the end and if Battler actually sees Beatrice but Rosa’s scene is also pretty dang interesting.
Episode 3:
What is with Rosa’s story?: Is Rosa telling the truth in her story? Is there something she is leaving out or adding in? Did she change something? If so, what was it. Also, did Rosa tell the siblings this information in every episode or just this one? Why did Rosa wait until now to tell people about this? Why did she even say it now? How does the red truth interact with a retelling of a story? Who else works at Kuwadorian?
What happened on the first twilight?: Did the siblings conspire to do it? Did Nanjo do it? How were all the rooms closed (if they even were all closed)? What was Beatrice about to say about the accidental deaths? Did everyone die from murder? Was there a natural death (my theory)?
What’s up with the gold?: It seems like the gold exists, right? I suppose we could interpret this as a magical scene and say that it doesn’t exist but let’s go with the idea that it does indeed exist. Where did Kinzo get it? Where was it being kept? What’s the solution to the riddle? I imagine that we need a little bit of Japanese to get everything here but I think that the translators feel like they give us enough information to solve it. Possibly not but it’s hard to say for sure (at least for me.) What was the key? Was the gold ever found before and we just never knew about it?
What happened to Rosa and Maria?: This one is super short since we might already know the answer but I also wonder why the gun was not taken and why they were unstaked. Always before the second twilight victims were staked. In that case, were they the second twilight victims? Perhaps we have miscounted. After all, the second episode seems to indicate that people don’t necessarily have to be killed in the order of the twilight that appears. Natsuhi also makes some comment about Rudolf and Kyrie being very close. Could they be the second twilight victims? Something to think about anyway.
What happened with Kyrie, Rudolf, and Hideyoshi?: Basically, who killed them and why? Battler proposes Eva, but why would she kill Hideyoshi? Also, was there anything in the awesome fight scenes that gave a hint about anything? I feel like there was something pretty major that I missed but I’m not sure what yet.
What went on with George?: The scene with George is kind of bizarre. Shannon comes back to life? While this is a magical scene, why would George even go to the mansion in the first place? Was it really to see Shannon, or was there another reason? How did he die? Who killed him? Did George write the numbers on the parlor door? What do the numbers mean anyway?
The web of red truth.: … Need I say more?
Ok so that was a rough draft of the mysteries that need to be solved. Obviously, this is just a huge list of questions with very few possible answers scattered here and there. I’ll probably have to update this list at some point, but these strike me as the main mysteries. Obviously there is the mystery of what happened on the island before Beatrice died. There’s the question of who the real Beatrice was. There’s the question of what happened between Kinzo and Beatrice. I’ve tried to limit myself to, what seem to me to be, more immediate mysteries.
A Brief Inkling of a Theory
And now, time to thoroughly embarrass myself (too late). So, I’ve been mulling over the idea of Kanon somehow cheating the red and not being dead. How might one accomplish this? Well, it occurred to me that if there was someone else named Kanon who was, in fact, dead then you could circumvent the red very easily. But we don’t know of anyone else named Kanon, do we? Well true, we don’t know of anyone else named Kanon. However, there are other servants. Was there another servant who was killed? Well, we don’t know about killed but there was another servant who was, at least, injured on the job. In fact, we keep hearing about this servant. This past event keeps getting brought up. It happened before Shannon arrived and I’m not sure that we are told anymore than the fact that this servant apparently was disrespectful towards Beatrice and fell down some stairs.
Ok, speculation time. I put this idea before you: this unfortunate servant was named Kanon (a fitting name for one that repeats). He was killed on the island for some reason. He died in what is now Jessica’s room. He was acquainted with who we now call Kanon. The person we now call Kanon has gotten himself hired as a servant in order to exact revenge on the killer/s of his old friend Kanon. Confusing enough? Well possibly. However, not only does this give us a way to solve the web of red truth, it gives us a possible motive for Kanon do kill people that he might otherwise have no reason to kill (such as Nanjo or Kumasawa who would have both been around when the original Kanon was working at the Ushiromiya family). It also gives us a possible way to get through the red truth that Kanon was killed in Jessica’s room. As a bonus it also means that Kanon could actually really appear in those magical scenes because he is never really dead.
Ok, so there are obviously some tricky things about this theory. For starters, how do Eva and Hideyoshi die? Does Kanon kill them? Is there a second killer in other episodes? Who is on Kanon’s agenda of people to kill? Is he covering up the important people with less important people? Also, does Kanon write the letters? How does he put letters on tables in rooms that he isn’t in? Why would Nanjo lie for him if Kanon is Nanjo’s enemy? There are more fairly big questions but I’m thinking that I need to give it a bit more thought.
Ok, so I apologize for the delay. Schoolwork was getting out of control for a little bit and this post kept getting put off. Thanks to @Aspirety, @pictoshark, @Karifean and @NotKyon, again, for their contributions to this post. I’m really hoping that my next post isn’t this long (and I’ll bet you are too).
Not bad, not bad at all! You’ve even managed to provide evidence to support your theory. However, if I may make a bold assertion…
Only one individual in this story may use the name Kanon. That is, of course, the Kanon we all know.
Some may view this as overstepping my boundaries as an impartial host, but I need to make sure things stay interesting! Take this declaration however you like. And no, don’t expect me to respond to questioning, I will only step forward when I feel it most worthwhile.
Going back to an earlier point in your post, you make a point of looking for hints in the fight scenes. In many cases the condition of the body corresponds with how they were killed in the magical scenes. Maria with her neck bruise, Rosa impaled on the spike, Natsuhi and Krauss strangled as they were by the golden arrow. What about Kyrie, Rudolf and Hideyoshi? Is there anything we can glean from how they were killed in the fantasy scenes?
And let’s not forget about Pictoshark’s angle.
Not seeing Kanon’s corpse is a good start, but there’s surely many other things to be found if we follow this line of thinking.
Well… that is unfortunate. I kind of liked that theory. Ah well, no sense in getting attached to things. Let’s start anew. However, I would like to borrow something from my previous theory. That is, somebody (other than Beatrice from Rosa’s story) dying before the events of Rokkenjima.
A Brief Inkling of a Theory v.0.2
Thinking, again, about the red web at the end of episode 3 lets look at another possibility. Suppose that one of the characters was already dead before the events of Rokkenjima. Nowhere is it said that the 18 people we are told are on the island have to be the 18 people we think are on the island. Suppose that one of the people we think is on the island is actually not and is, in fact dead. The most likely person to not be on the island and have died is Kinzo. After all, Battler never sees him and I think that most of the scenes that he ‘appears’ in could be interpreted in a different way. If this was the case then might there be another person taking Kinzo’s place at the table, so to speak? It seems likely to me that there very well might be. This might give us an explanation as to whether or not there is a 19th person. As Battler puts it in episode 1, this person X is between the numbers. They both are and aren’t a 19th person.
Is there any evidence for this assumption? Well as I’ve mentioned before, Battler never sees Kinzo. In fact, almost no character gets to see Kinzo. Off the top of my head only some of the servants (specifically the servants who have the one-winged eagle), Nanjo (says that he plays chess with Kinzo in episode 2) and Natsuhi. There are also other people who are supposed to have heard his voice through the door. However, more often then not there is no response to people knocking on the door. Can we think of a reason why the servants might want to keep up the pretense of Kinzo being alive? Well, I can think of at least one reason: their jobs. We are told in the tips menu that the servants with the one winged crest are not trusted by Krauss and Natsuhi. However, because they are hired by Kinzo they can’t be fired. Therefore, as long as Kinzo is alive their jobs are secure. All bets are off, though, when Kinzo dies. If Kinzo died they would almost certainly want to make it seems like Kinzo had not. Another piece of evidence might be the first twilight in episode 3. The red truth certainly seems to indicate that Kanon, Shannon, Genji, Gohda, Kumasawa, and Kinzo died. It also says that nobody committed suicide. Beatrice seems to be on the verge of saying something like that nobody died by accident. I feel like there might be a little bit more to what she was going to say but we can only speculate on that. I’ve suggested before that someone might have died from natural causes such as Kinzo dying from his disease. If we go with the theory that Kinzo is already dead then this theory about the first twilight would flow pretty naturally out of it. There is another, kind of circumstantial thing that might also lend this theory some weight. Why do these events take place now? The epitaph had been up for a while before and the island had had more than 13 people on it before too. So why do all these people get murdered on the island in 1986? Before this theory all I could think of to answer this question is the arrival of Battler after his absence. However, now we can suggest that the real catalyst is the death of Kinzo prior to the events.
So, some implications and explanations are in order. First, if Kinzo is dead there are only about 4 people that necessarily know about it: Kanon, Shannon, Genji and Nanjo. One thing I might note is that all of these characters die in every episode (or at least seem to, I’ve still got my eye on you Kanon). If this is the case we might suggest that their death might be related, in some way, to Kinzo’s death and the cover-up. Now, I’ve also suggested that Kumasawa’s death is important seeing as it occurs along with Nanjo’s death twice and that it also appears to be the case that Kumasawa worked at Kuwadorian. It may be that this usurper knows quite a bit of the family history and wants Kumasawa dead for an older reason. Ok, what else? Well, as I said just a little bit ago, it seems like at least Krauss and Natsuhi don’t know since, if they did, Krauss would already be the head of the family. This would suggest that when Natsuhi ‘meets Kinzo’ in Kinzo’s office that she really does think that she is talking to Kinzo when, in fact, she is not. It even seems to hint this in the narrative since Kinzo seems to be talking in a very different manner than we would expect him to. Even Natsuhi seems to notice that he is acting very kindly, not at all like what she expected. He also seems to spend a majority of the time facing away from her. What do I suggest might be happening? Someone is pretending to be Kinzo, disguising themselves as him and fooling Natsuhi. This is all a trick to fool people about Kinzo’s time of death. However, when Eva and Natsuhi come back the person pretending to be Kinzo hid themselves. I might suggest here that they were looking for something in Kinzo’s room and that is why they did not try and leave the office for all that time. However, that is kind of a moot point at the moment.
Edit: Ok, this one I have to give credit to @pictoshark for pointing this out to me. It is possible that Krauss and Natsuhi either know or are involved in Kinzo’s death since Krauss may want to have some time to cover the paper trail that would have been left from his embezzling.
Now, inevitably someone is going to bring up the fact that Battler does see Kinzo at the end of episode 2. However, let us think about the scenario a little more carefully. I would like to propose a theory that some people might like to call a cop out. What if Battler dreamed the entire ending of episode 3? He had been drinking right before, right? Also I imagine that there is a fair amount of exhaustion with this whole event. Battler is unused to heavy drinking at his age so I feel like his passing out from alcohol and exhaustion is not out of the question. After having thought about witches and such all day I feel like a dream about all of the things that Battler sees happen would actually make a lot of sense. Does that mean he dreams the stuff with Rosa and Maria too? I’m not sure. But I would like to say, at least, that the part immediately involving Battler might have just been a dream about meeting the witch, Kinzo and Genji and having everything explained since he was so desperately looking for an answer.
So there is a little bit more of an expansion on my theory. Possibly I will work a little more on it before the tea party ends.
I have to admit, I thought the Kanon theory had a certain elegance to it, particularly when we consider that Kanon isn’t his real name – it’s his servant name, and his real name is a mystery. And with the ‘magical side’ showing that the name Beatrice can be passed on like a title … if we’re treating the magical story as metaphorical, I wonder if there’s some metaphor there. But unless there’s some way to wiggle around the bold truth, I suppose we must accept Kanon is the only Kanon.
I like the way you’re thinking now, though, @Seraphitic – and it can follow from @pictoshark’s line of thinking about what Battler can confirm of people’s characters, and what might be an elaboration. What can we confirm that way about Kinzo’s character, or Kanon’s for that matter? What can’t we?
Soon I’m going to replay chapter 3 for the tea party, I think, and keep an eye on those green questions. Watch this space.
So I was speaking with @soggysadboi and @Seraphitic earlier to help try to refresh my knowledge on Umineko episode 3. I haven’t really had a decent block of free time and focus to properly refresh my knowledge on it since I read it some number of weeks back… but thanks to these guys and the manga (which was @Aspirety’s suggestion – thanks!) I’ve managed to restore at least some of my memories.
As a result, we’ll now have this vaguely large and terribly incoherent text wall! (I’ve started writing this at 1AM, so we’ll see where this takes us.) Anyway, let’s start.
As is customary with my posts, I’ll note a “few” of the points of interest.
Definitions
These are all definitions that Beatrice gave.
Beatrice’s Closed Room Definition
Refers to a room where the inside and outside are completely separated such that it would be impossible for all types of direct or indirect intervention beyond that boundary, as well as an all-inclusive denial of the existence of hidden doors. Fishing wire, radio waves, and so on are included in this definition.
However, transmission of intent is specifically not ruled out by her definition, despite being a closed room.
Traps
Some mechanism that activates when a victim triggers it on their own, including things which activate remotely or by timer.
Red Truths
General
Rokkenjima
“Of all the doors that exist on Rokkenjima, none has a crack through which a key can slip.”
“A hidden mansion called Kuwadorian does exist in the forest of Rokkenjima.”
“There are no more than 18 humans on this Rokkenjima!” (Stated prior to any murders taking place.)
“There are no more than 18 humans on this Rokkenjima” -> this Rokenjima. Peculiar. Doesn’t that seem like a convenient way to word things? “This” implies that at least one other “Rokkenjima” exists. Perhaps it’s referring to the Rokkenjima of 1967, or perhaps it’s referring to the current state of Rokkenjima, or the state of Rokkenjima in a past gameboard… Or maybe it’s just a red herring. I’m not sure, but that’s definitely suspicious wording. (Then again, what isn’t here?)
The Beatrice of 1967 did exist as a human and had a conversation with Kinzo “like” the one Battler was shown.
Regarding Beatrice’s death in her memories “How does that look alive to you? It’s definitely dead!” (“It.”)
Refused:
Ronove was unable to answer whether Beatrice was born through something like a homunculus because it would cause a “stalemate.”
Incidents
Twilight 1
There are five master keys, one for each servant.
No doors or windows exist in those six rooms which can be locked without a key.
The six victims of this twilight, Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa, are dead.
Nobody is hiding in any of those six rooms. “Only the victims are inside the rooms, and no other people exist inside the rooms.”
“The six died instantly! By ‘died instantly’, I mean the targets instantly became incapable of action after being attacked. […] it was completely impossible for them to take any actions of their own will.”
The six were not killed by traps, nor did any of them commit suicide.
Refused:
The six deaths are all homicides.
Twilight 2
Rosa and Maria died (homicides), just as Nanjo diagnosed. (Rosa was stabbed in the medula oblongata with the pointed gate of the fence, and Maria was strangled with bare hands.)
Refused:
Battler makes a claim that Eva and Hideyoshi worked together to create an alibi, placing Eva as the main attacker, forcing Ronove to resign.
Twilight 4
long series of red truths regarding Kyrie and food
Refused:
Battler: “Repeat it!! ‘At that time, Ushiromiya Eva did not take a step outside her room’!!” (This wasn’t specifically refused, but Evatrice didn’t answer either.)
Twilight n
After Jessica was injured, Eva was constantly under Battler’s supervision. Battler is neither the culprit nor an accomplice.
There are no more than 18 humans on this island.
No life forms other than humans have any connection to this game.
The following people are dead: Kinzo, Krauss, Natsuhi, Hideyoshi, George, Rudolf, Kyrie, Rosa, Maria, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, Kumasawa, Nanjo.
The following people are alive: Battler, Eva, Jessica.
The culprit who killed Nanjo, who died was directly killed by a human standing with both feet on the ground as the two stared into each other’s faces, was neither Battler nor Eva nor Jessica. Committing a crime is impossible for Jessica at this point, nor was she involved, and Battler isn’t the culprit.
So at this point, if only Battler, Eva, and Jessica are alive, and the killer of Nanjo was “definitely a human,” but none of those three had done it then that only leaves dead humans and unaccounted for humans, right? Well, and correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the only humans on the island those eighteen? In that case then was the culprit a living human? There was the issue of Kanon apparently dying in episode two, but then disappearing. Is it the same sort of problem here?
Incidents
Incident 1
Beatrice resigned this one.
These are six closed rooms all tied together.
Nanjo confirmed that each of the discovered corpses were dead. (A red truth also confirmed that each of them were killed instantly.)
It’s claimed (without counter) that the culprit got into an accident and died that way.
1-1. Shannon
Beatrice’s Closed Room; “unlocked” by breaking into it.
Parlor.
One master key (on Shannon; exact location unspecified).
One Western envelope with the family crest; rather than a letter there was a key to a guest room on the second floor inside.
It’s stated, but not in red, that “apart from the five master keys, there will be only one key that can unlock certain rooms.” Note that this definition isn’t exactly the same as “for each room, there will be only one key apart from the master key that can unlock it, but nothing else.” For example, let’s say a key is able to unlock a certain combination of rooms. e.g., key 1 can unlock room A, key 2 can unlock room B, and key 3 can unlock rooms A and B. “Certain rooms” could refer to a set of rooms, hence my distinction. However I highly doubt this to be the case, and it would certainly be disappointing if so.
1-2. Kumasawa.
Beatrice’s Closed Room; unlocked with the key from 1-1.
Second floor guest room.
One master key (on Kumasawa; exact location unspecified).
One Western envelope (with the family crest?); had a key to the third floor waiting room.
1-3. Gohda.
Beatrice’s Closed Room; unlocked with the key from 1-2.
Third floor waiting room.
One master key (on Gohda; exact location unspecified).
One Western envelope (with the family crest); had a key to the second floor VIP room.
1-4. Genji.
It is not directly stated that this is a closed room.
Second floor VIP room.
One master key (location completely unspecified).
One key to the underground boiler room was discovered. (Inside an envelope, or… ?)
1-5. Kinzo.
It is not directly stated that this is a closed room.
Underground boiler room.
The key to the chapel was discovered. (Supposedly inside an envelope, along with a letter, which urged the relatives to solve the riddle of the epitaph.)
No master key discovered. (As would be expected, since Kinzo is not a servant.)
1-6. Kanon.
Chapel.
One master key (location completely unspecified).
The key to the first floor parlor was discovered. (Inside an envelope, or… ?)
Incident 2
Rose garden.
(Later, after the reconstruction in twilight 4…6.)
Virgilia: “After Rosa and Maria’s deaths, the remaining survivors rechecked all of the doors and windows in the mansion. They constructed a barricade. They re-confirmed that their defenses were solid.”
Battler: “Dad carried a portable cigarette butt holder with him. I’m finally starting to see why Kyrie-san went out of her way to put a cigarette butt in her own pocket. It was because that cigarette butt meant something. That cigarette butt was itself a message left by Kyrie-san for us…!!”
Battler: "It’s this. This cigarette butt. This was set in the ashtray of the guest room that Uncle Hideyoshi was in."
Battler: “Aunt Eva hated smoking!! There’s no way there’d be a cigarette butt there while Aunt Eva was sick and sleeping!!! However, there was a cigarette butt in the ashtray. When she saw that, Kyrie-san noticed immediately. …Uncle Hideyoshi was lying. She realized that Aunt Eva hadn’t really been sleeping, …and that she’d snuck out of the room!!”
2-1. Rosa.
Stabbed in the medulla oblongata with the pointed gate of the fence.
2-2. Maria.
Strangled.
(As an aside, Maria’s death is shown first by the predecessor Beatrice, rather than Rosa’s. That said, Rosa was first in the whole chain of events so this probably means nothing.)
Incident 4…6
Hall of the mansion.
“Three people: Rudolf, Kyrie, and Hideyoshi, went to the mansion and were killed there.”
4. Rudolf.
Forehead.
5. Kyrie.
Stomach.
“The disorder of the clothing on all three suggests that they were fighting or running away. Since the three corpses were not found right next to each other, it is hypothesized that after coming into contact with the culprit, they attempted some form of resistance.”
(Later, during the reconstruction of the scene.)
Beato searched Kyrie’s corpse’s pockets, laying out whatever was inside on the floor. There were:
Handkerchief
Tissue
Key to her house
Stub of a boat ticket
Lighter
Cigarette butt
One-hundred yen coin
Kyrie doesn’t smoke, apparently.
6. Hideyoshi.
Chest.
Incident 7…8
Rose garden arbor.
Nanjo: “…St-Strangulation, I believe. …Come, take a look at this. On their necks, there are distinct markings that something thin was used to strangle them.” (Emphasis my own.)
7. Krauss.
Strangled; stake in thigh.
8. Natsuhi.
Strangled; stake in calf.
Incident 9
Parlor.
9. George.
Eva opened the door; she seemed to feel the resistance of the lock.
Digits written in red:
Dec: 07151129
Hex: 6D 1E19
Oct: 33 217 031
The leading zero indicates that this shouldn’t be treated as just a number. (And the narrative using the word “digits” rather than “number” implies this as well.)
Nanjo suggests that the number is a magic square. As a 3x3 square that’d be:
(This doesn’t look like a magic square by itself so far.)
Battler wonders if it might be a date. “It might be a coincidence, but my birthday is July 15th (0715)” (Nobody is aware of anybody whose birthday is November 29th.)
Reunited with Shannon, but dies.
I wonder if this is a Mondegreen of some sort… Another thought was that these numbers could somehow be directions. If it is a date, then maybe the 11/29 is the Kyrie’s baby was actually due, or perhaps miscarried? Maybe it’s the birthday of one of the servants or the day that “the human Beatrice died.” Either way it doesn’t necessarily need to be the case that the 07/15 intentionally matches Battler’s birthday, right?
In any case the most likely possibilities for this number relate to Kyrie being related somehow, but she should be dead at this point. Even in the case of one of my last-minute-thoughts below I’m not sure how and why she would factor in.
Maybe the number is supposed to be pronounced in two-digit chunks. e.g., “07” would be just “seven.” So it’d be 07, 15, 11, 29.
Battler: "When Dad’s group was attacked, their master key was definitely stolen.
…But the doors and windows to the guesthouse were built so that you couldn’t lock them from the outside, no matter how hard you tried.
So that master key should have had nothing to do with the guesthouse closed room…"
Cool quotes
“Watch what may be the final magic of a single butterfly who used to be called a witch…!” -Beato
“I wish I could get hired to assassinate you. All I’d have to do is relax at home for a month and the job would take care of itself.” -Ange (savage)
Things that irked me
During the game with “Evatrice” they bring up how Kyrie went to the mansion, stating in red that she couldn’t have gone there for food. It took several pages of dialogue just to reach the extremely obvious conclusion (and it’s extremely obvious without any hindsight mind you) that she went there with another goal in mind. The over-dramatization here is just terrible. When I was going through it I thought that I had missed something that made this obvious conclusion invalid, and yet it’s completely valid. I didn’t realize it was Keiichi who was playing against the witch.
That scene where Kyrie fights with the power of jealousy. Far too “chuunibyou” for me. It was neat and all, and I definitely got the vibe that I was reading something that was intended to be pretty cool, but it just killed my immersion personally. In contrast, I really liked the scene where Rudolf had that gun duel. That was clever and badass. But anyway.
Some last minute thoughts
Can we consider the possibility of a “witch” side and a “human” side? Let’s suppose you have a situation like in Maria’s puzzle book where there are n-wolves and m-sheep, but you don’t know who’s a wolf, and who’s a sheep. What then? It seems reasonable to me that something like that could be going on here. Something where we have two sides and everybody is figuring out which side they’re on. I’m not sure I’m really framing this well, but I had a very distinct realization and I’ve yet to figure out a reasonable way to express it…
Are “zombies” a thing? Let’s suppose that as a “witch” you could actually kill somebody for a short period of time, then if enough time is remaining, bring them back (either directly by manual intervention or automatically by natural occurrence). (Similarly, there’s the well-known account of Clairvius Narcisse. Not that there’s any supporting evidence for that though.) I’m sure there’s a better way to explain things than “they were dead but not really, haha,” so I’m not very fond of this particular notion…
Does Beatrice ever give a definition for “human,” or “person,” anyway? One would think that terms like those wouldn’t actually need a definition here… but considering her tendency toward tricks and mischief it seems like something that could have a “convenient meaning.” Though this is just the paranoia talking.
I’m thinking that it probably was the case that 1967’s Virgilia was Kumasawa or perhaps related to her in some way, but I’m not sure how either.
Ah that’s pretty neat. I was thinking something similar (Kyrie rather than Hideyoshi) might have been the case but dismissed it.
I’m still wondering who killed George though. Maybe Shannon “under the spell of furniture” (or something) killed him… or maybe Eva really did, or even Hideyoshi (somehow) for that matter. Alibis become a lot harder to track as the incidents increase…
That’s also something that I’ve wondered and considered. My view on this is that the challenger and primary culprit, in episode three anyway, differ.
To expand on this, I’ve taken these gameboards that we’ve been seeing as variations of the same plot that took place in episode one with different “configurations” so to speak (I feel that was established early on in episode two). In the case with this gameboard, we’re seeing the configuration/variation that resulted in the condition of “a new Beatrice being selected” and the results of that. I’m taking “Beatrice” to be more of a concept (like @Aspiretypostulated earlier), or a title of sorts, than a specific person. I see Beatrice as “what you would call a person, group, or phenomenon upon having reached some set of conditions” right now.
Oh wow, I didn’t notice that at all! Nice catch! Will definitely keep this in mind going forward into episode four.
I had a theory going that maybe Maria didn’t necessarily meet with Beatrice in the rose garden, since in episode one she never explicitly stated she had, just that Beatrice lent her the umbrella and letter. In episode two, the 19th person that we see could be explained (rather poorly) as either being a concept or as an example of “this is how I would have done it if a 19th person were there” (or more vaguely as “a special case of how episode two’s gameboard was configured”). However, if Maria did actually meet with Beatrice in the rose garden each time, around the time when everybody supposedly had an alibi, then… well, I guess this idea doesn’t really work after all.
It’s pretty excellent! I may or may not feel slightly betrayed by Beatrice’s shift from “nice kid that’s still learning and experiencing things that we take as givens” to “lol nope it was all an act, getrekt m8.” I do feel that there were real traces of some of her core personality in her act, but I’m not really sure what to make of it.
Overall this episode has definitely been my favorite so far, even with the few gripes I did have with it.
Ah that’s a good point, I hadn’t thought about it from the perspective of “innocent things” specifically. Maybe I had managed to accidentally touch on that with some loose thoughts on Rosa seeing “Beatrice” in the rose garden along with Maria in episode two… (I s’pose that’s one specific instance.)
One of the other defining scenes would be anything taking place in the study, since Battler is almost never there. More specifically, Kinzo is suspect. As @Seraphiticmentioned, we almost never see him from Battler’s perspective.
Regarding the events in Purgatorio / The Metarix or the tea parties, there are some really interesting developments that have taken place. So apparently Lambdadelta is some sort of mastermind(?) and controls Beatrice. I think I remember seeing Beatrice mentioning how she’s “stuck in a cage,” so that would make sense.
Beatrice also tears down Evatrice with red truths. That’s neat. I get the feeling that this will somehow be relevant later on, though I’ve not the slightest idea how.
There are a few things I’ve left out of this post simply because it’s taken too long to write. (It is now 5AM.) In particular, there are many things Seraphitic has posted that I’ve wanted to comment on. (It’s mostly agreement.) I’ll have to edit this post with some responses, or reply later!
Also, there were many things which I was prepared to post until I realized they didn’t actually work, or they were just vague ideas. For example, “Maybe Maria’s dad was Genji” (no…) or “Maybe there’s another Maria posing as this Maria” (why though?). Something Aspirety mentioned before has been stuck in my head still: Ange is the only surviving family member who was supposed to attend the family conference with them. (Though I might just not be remembering that correctly, and maybe it’s not even all that relevant.)
TL;DR: After reading episode three, I have some questions and feel like I might’ve been given the tools to answer them… but am still trying to figure out why I can’t hammer these rubber bands into the slot for screws. Everything’s suspicious. There are definitely things I’ve forgotten or glossed over in this post, though I’m not sure what they are.
